C-SPAN reaches carriage deal with YouTube TV and Hulu
Streaming services will carry C-SPAN’s three channels beginning this fall at the same per-subscriber fee paid by cable and satellite providers, ending a dispute that squeezed the network’s revenues
C-SPAN said Wednesday that it has reached an agreement to carry its three public affairs channels on YouTube TV and Hulu’s live television package, resolving a months-long dispute that had left millions of streaming subscribers without access to the network and contributed to a decline in C-SPAN’s revenues.
Under the deal, the two streaming platforms will pay the same per-subscriber fee charged to cable and satellite companies—about 87 cents per subscriber per year—and C-SPAN will continue its long-standing policy of running no advertising on its television channels. The network said the channels will appear on both services beginning this fall.
Congressional leaders had drawn attention to the absence of C-SPAN from major streaming lineups this year. Lawmakers passed a resolution in the spring urging Alphabet, the parent company of YouTube, and The Walt Disney Company, which owns Hulu, to add C-SPAN to their programming. Because much of C-SPAN’s schedule consists of live congressional sessions and hearings, the network and lawmakers said the omission reduced public access to unfiltered coverage of government proceedings.
C-SPAN’s audience and revenue have been affected by changes in how Americans get television. At its peak about a decade ago, C-SPAN’s channels were available in roughly 100 million homes. The number of homes paying for television has since fallen to about 70 million, with roughly 20 million of those now receiving television through services such as YouTube TV and Hulu, where C-SPAN had not been carried. Nielsen reported that linear streaming services accounted for 16% of television consumption in July, a share that the research firm said has more than doubled since 2021.
The network said its revenues declined from nearly $64 million in 2019 to $45.4 million in 2023. C-SPAN Chief Executive Sam Feist said the agreement would restore access for viewers. “We are proud that this agreement will give millions more Americans access to our unfiltered coverage of the nation's political process,” he said in a statement.
YouTube’s chief business officer, Mary Ellen Coe, said the deal would expand C-SPAN’s footprint on YouTube and noted the partnership would include programming related to the nation’s upcoming 250th birthday. C-SPAN has also announced plans for new nonprocedural programming, including a series called “Ceasefire,” which aims to bring politicians together to debate policy differences.
Neither C-SPAN nor the streaming services disclosed what changed in negotiations to produce the agreement. Analysts and some lawmakers noted the per-subscriber fee involved is small relative to the overall revenue of large technology and media companies, and that the companies have significant business ties in Washington.
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who pressed the platforms to carry C-SPAN, welcomed the resolution on social media, saying the move would help preserve “unfiltered coverage about what's going on in the halls of Congress.” The deal restores a widely used public affairs resource to millions of viewers who have migrated from traditional pay-TV to streaming platforms.